When I first became a writer, one of the first pieces of advice I got was “write about what you know.” Since I know my family, I thought I should base half my characters off of them. All I would have to do was change their names slightly and give them the same personalities. Simple, right? It turns out it’s harder than you may think.
Creating a character from scratch means that you decide everything, from their personality to their appearance. If you have a specific plan for the character, like they need to be a snobbish aristocrat, you just write them as such. You don’t have to worry about a real person’s reactions. But, if you want to base the snobbish aristocrat on someone you know in real life, you have to tread carefully. This could no only cause hurt feelings, but it also limits creativity.
As an example, in my earliest draft of Silver Rose, I wanted to throw my brother in as a rival to my main character. He was supposed to be better at magic than her and flaunt it a bit, but I didn’t want to hurt my brother’s feelings. He’s actually quite protective of me in real life and wouldn’t flaunt being better than me. (Maybe at video games). With this in mind, I started to write the rival as kinder and, frankly, more generic. There was no rivalry anymore, no substance to the character. I was writing him as “nice” so I wouldn’t offend anyone. It was rather boring.
I stopped trying to base characters off of real people and I think my writing improved. I was no longer constricted by real people’s personalities. I could create brand new personalities for my characters, make them act how I wanted them to act, and see how they grew as characters. My imagination was my guide, which in my opinion, is a fiction author’s greatest tool during the writing process. Without it, I never would have finished Silver Rose.